Twenty contenders, forty days, one prince who watches you. The wire says his father is dead. He still toasts him.
You are the fastest telegraph operator in the mountains, drawn by lot as the people's contender. On your first night at the palace, the wire says the king is dead. At breakfast, Prince Julian toasts his father's health. Forty days.
First breakfast at the palace on Ostrel Island. Twenty contenders at one long table, and you are the one Kestrin sent by public draw.
All last night the telegraph line in your wall clicked, and you read it without trying: the king is dead, his body moved to the crypt.
Now Prince Julian toasts his father's good health, and he means it. Yours is the only glass that did not go up.
The chancellor is watching your glass, the telegraph chief is watching you, and the first contender goes home on Sunday.
You are 27, the fastest operator in the mountains. You ran the telegraph office in Kestrin for eight years, until the draw picked you to stand for the provinces.
The prince choosing a contender: tall, lean, dark wavy hair, gray eyes, a thin white scar across the back of his right hand, a navy uniform coat.
He runs the selection and the kingdom's purse: short, broad, white hair combed flat, round gold spectacles, a black frock coat, a gold watch chain.
A woman in a green eyeshade reads the palace wire too. Keep reading.
One of the contenders already thinks the crown is hers. Keep reading.
Someone holds the key to the king's sickroom. Keep reading.
Mirrors, white lilies that smell too sweet, and twenty chairs, one fewer every Sunday.
One contender is drawn from the common provinces, and her province gets grain for each week she stays. It stops the day she goes home, so one wrong word is a hungry winter.
Every telegraph sender taps in a rhythm as clear as a signature. It shows who sent a message, not who wrote it, and the chief knows your fist too.
Contenders stay at the palace for the whole selection, and the chancellery reads every letter. A contender who withdraws is out, and her province's grain ends.
You remember him falling tonight. He's alive, wearing the twin of your ring. At dawn, the Queen announces your engagement.
He is the prince of the kingdom you swore to hate. In forty-nine days the seventh trial needs one victor, or the truce breaks.
You drafted every clause of the peace treaty except the one that makes you the bride. Signing is in twenty days.
Two hundred days of winter. The only warm thing in the city hides in your icehouse.
